Calgary businessman Trond Frantzen, CEO and founder of PowerPlus Systems Corporation, describes how the terrorist attacks Sept. 11 in the U.S. have affected his office and likely many other workplaces around Alberta.

I had wanted to write earlier about our reaction to the terrorist atrocity in the U.S. I wanted to, but couldn’t.

We’re in shock and mourning here, pretty well all of us. I think it’s safe to say that just about all Canadians consider this attack upon our American brothers and sisters to be an attack on us.

Not only were up to 150 Canadians killed in this act of war, but many, many of us personally know someone who was either killed or is missing at the Word Trade Center.

The World Trade Center's twin towers were powerful symbols of business.

We’re very thankful that we didn’t have anyone on assignment in New York or Washington, D.C., that week. We did have a couple of people stranded in Dallas, but all is well with our folks.

It’s bad enough when we look at this kind of incident with abstraction, not knowing any of the people who were killed and hurt.

But this isn’t some distant story or part of a movie. This was mass murder by fanatics. This was personal.

We were in shock when we heard the news. To us, the WTC is a big part of our lives, and a symbol of our business life. The WTC is not just a big building in a big city . . . it is a landmark and a symbol, even here in Calgary, almost 3,000 miles away.

By the time we got in to the office, someone told me that a second plane had hit the WTC’s Tower Two.

We immediately suspended our sales operations into the United States (not that anyone was really calling), and soon found that even Canada was not responding. Our sales operations were pretty well shut down for the entire week. We managed to reach some clients, but certainly not with the intent of talking business. It was to find out if everyone was safe and who was missing. And pretty well everyone we spoke with was affected.

That week was so hard, personally and in business. Our business simply stopped dead in the water — costing us $100,000 US in lost business. The longer-term financial impact is even worse. Most of our clients are blue-chip U.S.-based companies, pretty well all of which have been hurt by this.

Our largest clients are American Airlines and Aon Corporation, who were devastated by this act. American Airlines, as you can imagine, because its planes and pilots and flight crew were at the centre of the event. Aon Corporation is one of the world’s largest insurance companies . . . and our largest single client. The company had 1,100 staff at WTC Tower Two, on several floors between 90 and 105. About 200 of those people are missing and presumed dead.

One of the people missing is Wendy Faulkner, a vice-president with Aon. This is very personal. Some of us here were close friends with Wendy. We had known her personally for several years, and had worked with her closely as well.

She was not only a client, but she became a personal friend. Wolfgang Wenk (our president) met with her personally in Chicago just a few weeks ago to discuss an extensive partnership between our firm and Aon. Linda Ganton (our operations director) received an e-mail from her at 7:30 a.m. (New York time) on that fateful Tuesday. That was clearly one of the last e-mails she sent.

The sad part is that Wendy and two friends had managed to somehow get from the 104th floor to a lower level, where they were seen trying to get on an express elevator to the ground floor. The elevator only had room for one more person.

One of her friends got on, but Wendy decided to stay with the second friend until the next elevator came. There was no next elevator. Sadly, no one has seen or heard from her since.

Many Canadians were also lost in this attack. And so were many of our clients.

We will survive the financial downside of this disaster, as will our clients. The world did not end, although it sure felt like it. Life, and business, will go on.

But we will never get over the terrible loss of life. The financial pain we will soon overcome; but this wanton act of mass murder, this outrage — this we will never forget.

Many of our employees went and gave blood on the Thursday after the tragic events.

Some of us took the time to sign the Alberta government’s Book of Condolences at the McDougall Centre later that week.

We are outraged. Americans are our brothers and sisters. Perhaps not many people around the world understand that, but Canadians are very close to Americans. We bitch and complain about them as if they were uncivilized neighbours. But they’re not. We’re allowed to bitch and complain because they are family.

No one is closer to our American brothers and sisters than the Canadian family.

And we will support them in any action they take.